Statutes: Crimes for the Times

In the hundred years since it was drafted, New York State's penal code has been subjected to haphazard amendment, but not until a state commission started the job 2½ years ago did anyone try to renovate the entire collection of statutes. Reorganized and rewritten in clear English, the commission's proposed code was delivered to the legislature last week. In whatever form it is finally passed, its most important contribution is likely to be its redefinition of crimes. Examples:

∙ MURDER: The distinction between first-and second-degree murder, which depends upon whether the murderer killed with "premeditation and deliberation," has been eliminated. Under the current code, says the commission, "a defendant's life frequently hangs upon a jury's decision concerning a highly technical issue." Under the revised code, there is only one degree of murder; mitigating circumstances would affect the sentence, not the charge.

∙ KIDNAPING: So broadly worded is the New York law, that a robber who compels a victim to move from one room to another can be charged with kidnaping; so can a parent in a broken family who takes a child from its authorized custodian. In the revised code, the crime Would not be kidnaping unless it involved "holding for ransom or some other purpose usually associated with kidnaping."

∙ BURGLARY: The traditional element of "breaking" is discarded from the definition. It is clearly burglary, under the proposed revision, even if a burglar enters through an open door.

The commission suggested that some practices, including adultery and homosexual relations between consenting adults, no longer be counted as criminal offenses. But the proposed code contains several new offenses not now recognized as crimes in New York. Among them:

∙ CRIMINAL SOLICITATION: Unsuccessfully trying to induce someone to commit a crime.

∙ RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT: Conduct that does not result in death or physical injury but creates a grave danger.

∙ PROMISSORY FRAUD: A swindle in which the culprit made or implied a false promise of future action, but cannot be convicted of any crime under existing law, because he did not lie about present facts.

∙ CRIMINAL TRESPASS: Unlawful entry without provable intent to commit any other crime. The revision would, for example, make possible the conviction of a suspect caught prowling in a house with no stolen property in his possession.